Special-interest groups protest budget cuts
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- November
- 9
As the Legislature prepares to meet in special session on budget cuts tomorrow, the halls of the Capitol and Legislative Office Building are busy with lobbyists and special-interest groups protesting proposed cuts in education, mental retardation and developmental disabilities, and other areas.
New York State United Teachers, the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, the Alliance for Quality Education and Citizen Action, along with parents and community members rallied against proposed education cuts totaling $686 million in the current budget year. They all broke pencils in unison to symbolize a broken promise and delivered them to Gov. David Paterson and legislators.
“Taking more than a billion dollars out of schools, colleges and other vital health programs would create chaos and suffering,” NYSUT President Richard Iannuzzi said in a statement. “It would put an unnecessary burden on local property taxpayers and hamper New York’s economic recovery by forcing the elimination of jobs—jobs vital to the economies of many local communities.”
“School district leaders worked hard this year to protect services for schoolchildren while minimizing local tax increases. Despite the weakest state aid in six years, we had the lowest average school tax increase in seven years,” said Robert Lowry, deputy director of the state Council of School Superintendents, said in a statement.
The groups urged lawmakers to accept $1.225 billion in cuts proposed by the governor excluding school aid and other local assistance and state operations cuts. The state should use its rainy-day funds to provide up to $1.2 billion to help close the gap; purchase prescription drugs in bulk; eliminate the Empire Zone program; and refinance state debt, according to the groups.
This entry was posted
on Monday, November 9th, 2009 at 1:39 pm by Cara Matthews.
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Jay Gallagher has covered Albany for Gannett News Service since 1984 and has been Albany Bureau chief since 1989. He`s a native of the Boston area and likes to point out that in this millennium, the score is Red Sox 1 championship, the Yankees 0. 
Cara Matthews has been a statehouse correspondent in the Albany Bureau since August 2005. Prior to that, she covered Putnam County government and politics at The Journal News for nearly five years. Before that, she worked at newspapers in Connecticut and covered the state Legislature for one of them. 
